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Kelsey Seymour

Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute of Sacred Music and Lecturer in East Asian Studies

Address:

409 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511

Region:

China

Kelsey Seymour will receive her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania in June 2018. At Yale, she will expand her dissertation, “The Buddha’s Voice: Ritual Sound and Sensory Experience in Medieval Chinese Religious Practice,” and prepare it for publication. The project explores chanting practices surrounding Chinese Buddhist texts during the Six Dynasties and Tang periods, and how these sonic activities and aural experiences affected not only people’s religious lives in a ritual context, but also the larger role of chant in the lives of medieval Chinese Buddhists, both lay and monastic.

Courses

EAST 405, MUSI 476, THST 326

Chinese Opera

This course introduces students to varieties of Chinese opera through plays, Chinese theories of music and acting, modern scholarship, and recorded media. Furthermore, students learn strategies to evaluate written and performed aspects of Chinese opera in a manner that can be extended to Western opera, film, and other performed genres.

Term: Fall 2018

Day/Time: T 1:30 PM - 3:20 PM

RLST 344, EALL 294, EAST 393

Death and the Afterlife in Chinese Cultures

This seminar explores ideas surrounding death in China and Taiwan, including retribution, the afterlife, and ghosts in Chinese religious traditions. To investigate this, we turn to religious scriptures, mortuary items, documentaries, and scholarly writings, and ask ourselves the following questions: How do concepts of the afterlife reflect and affect the situations of the living? How do the living maintain a relationship with the dead?